How To Spot Fake News (7 Simple Tips)

There's been a lot of talk about Facebook taking steps to weed out "fake news." When we think of the subject, we often think of political news. Though this blog describes fake news made for political agendas, there is a lot of fake news out there that isn't political - "Milk is Bad For Humans But the Big Dairy Corporations Don't Want You To Know It Because the Moon Landing Was Fake!" - but can still be scrutinized with the following tips. So, here are some characteristics that can help you spot a fake news story, or an opinion piece that calls itself news. Little things we often don't consider:

1. The article's headline is in all-caps.
2. The "news site"'s Facebook page has a profile picture of Ronald Reagan, often displayed in front of an American flag.
(This is sometimes also true with a picture of Bernie Sanders in front of an American flag, but it's far more common with President Reagan's mug...I can't fathom why that is.)
3. The article's headline is a run-on sentence. Ex: "Obama Bans the Word Christmas From Military Christmas Ceremonies to Destroy the First Amendment and Sacrifice America to Muslim Agenda Hey Mickey You're So Fine You're So Fine You Blow My Mind Hey Mickey"
4. The article's headline has more than one exclamation point. Or in many cases, a single exclamation point.
5. Multiple spelling errors.
6. A news article's headline should sum up the event it describes in the most succinct way possible, not give vague clues and hints as to what the reader will read: "You'll Never Believe What Kind of Scandal Ted Cruz is Involved In," or "Lindsey Graham Just Scored a Victory For Lower Taxes in the Most Epic Way Possible." These kinds of headlines are also strongly suspect.
7. The article's story has not been corroborated by a source not displaying the above symptoms. This is very important. In fact, it should be your only tip.

The First Amendment is a great blessing we enjoy in our country, but it does not protect against slander. And, as I learned from watching Judge Mathis, in order for something to be slanderous, it must 1.) be proven to be untrue, and 2.) cause damage to the reputation of the person it addresses. I urge us all to think of that the next time we're about to share a "news" article without at least a Snopes check.
The inevitable reply to that might be, "I think the fact-checkers should be fact-checked." Yes, I too find facts to be terribly inconvenient when they rain on some little part of my agenda. Like when I didn't believe in peanut butter. I was confronted with undeniable evidence that peanut butter exists, and I checked the fact-checkers, desperately trying to prove them wrong, even if it took unscrupulous articles to pacify my denial. But, "facts are stubborn things."
Peanut butter is real.

"I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak." -Matthew 12:36

A Thing is a Thing, Not What You Think About That Thing

There's a copy-n-paste post going around the ol' Facebook that, to paraphrase, asks people the question, "If my faith in Christ does no harm to you, why are you so against it?" I tend to avoid copy-n-paste things, but one comment on such a post caught my eye:

"lol this is so dumb. Your faith is the biggest argument against equal rights for the LGBT community, the reason why planned parent hood is being defunded , religion is the reason for all of the war in the world. Dumb, gullible, ignorant and oppressive. That's the harm it brings"

What the person who wrote this comment failed to realize is that the Christian faith in itself is not to blame, but people who misunderstand and misuse it.
One doesn't need faith to harm people - Hitler had no faith in any deity, yet he persecuted gays, much like Che Guevara, also an atheist. Not to mention the Marxist atheism that led the likes of Stalin to kill and imprison countless religious Russians. Rather, it is the misuse of a faith (or lack thereof) that causes harm. If a Christian tries to legislate morality by instilling their belief into law, that is misuse of that faith. I cannot support the decision to outlaw gay marriage due to my religious belief, which does not condone it. Concerning any similar situation, how can I hold non-believers to a standard that even I, a believer, can't live up to? That's why I need Jesus, after all.
There are exceptions of course: if a faith teaches against things that are universally agreed upon (well, sort of) by everyone of all faiths and lacks of faith: like murder, robbery, rape, etc. On the flip side, if a faith, condones and encourages something dangerous, like blowing up things in order to bring people into submission to their deity, then that faith must then be considered harmful.

But even the Bible does not teach that faith is something to be imposed on people, but must be a choice. The Crusades, the Inquisitions, were all wrong. So, again, it's not the faith that brings harm - it's those who misuse it. If I claimed Christopher Hitchens was risen from the grave and wanted me to oppress gays, when that's clearly not true, it would be no reflection on Mr. Hitchens - it would be only the result of my own deluded, erroneous use of his name. Likewise with Christianity.

A simple way to put it: a thing is a thing, and not what people say or think about that thing.

God is Everywhere

I'm glad God is everywhere at once. Not only because He comforts earthquake-stricken New Zealand while at the same time numbering the tears of victims of Boko Haram and aiding the hungry in Amarillo, but also because He occupies every piece of a broken heart.
I'm glad God sees everything. Not just because He sees the cash given to a single mother by an anonymous Samaritan while at the same time seeing the corrupt handshakes and intentions of a politician, but also because He sees each time we fall to our knees, alone in our apartments, with no human audience to weep for us.
I'm glad God weeps with us.

"If God sees all and is everywhere, why doesn't He make these things stop?"

God not only sees the evil that we choose to do, but He also sees the good we choose not to do. He sees the hungry in Amarillo. And, He sees us throw the "junk mail" from the High Plains Food Bank and the Salvation Army into the trash can. And, He sees the votes we willingly cast for the corrupt, turning a blind eye to their crimes in the name of our golden calves - the red elephant or the blue donkey.
"Was your mother sent away because I divorced her? Did I sell you as slaves to my creditors? No, you were sold because of your sins. And your mother, too, was taken because of your sins. Why was no one there when I came? Why didn’t anyone answer when I called?" -Isaiah 50:1-2 (NLT)

I thank God that He allows us the choice to do good. What kind of story would the story of humankind be if we only did what is right as autonomous creatures? What a glorious and gritty story it is, that we have the grueling task of choosing good, that we have laughter in relief when good prevails, that we have tears in sorrow when we're afflicted.

And what better eye to form the characters, to write the story, to watch it unfold, as the God who took part in its ugliest, most painful point on the cross?

"I can never escape from Your Spirit!
    I can never get away from Your presence!
If I go up to heaven, You are there;
    if I go down to the grave, You are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
    if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there Your hand will guide me,
    and Your strength will support me."
-Psalm 139: 7-10 (NLT)

Talkin' Lowdown Amarillo, Texas Street Preacher Blues

There's a fella here in Amarillo, Texas whose days are filled with street preaching via megaphone, spewing the basic "everyone but me is going to hell" doctrine of those like Westboro Baptist Church and others cut from their blasphemous cloth. The man's basic message is that, even if you think you're a Christian, and think you're saved, you're actually not a Christian and are going to hell if you've sinned after accepting Christ.
People with this false doctrine build their argument, like any false doctrine, on Scripture misunderstood, twisted, or taken out of context; passages like 1 John 3:6-9, which says, "Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God." What the man with the megaphone doesn't realize is that this sin refers to the unrepentant, habitual sin of those with an empty proclamation of Jesus, who attempt to trample on grace, rather than live under it. This doesn't refer to true Christians - and what is a true Christian? A true Christian is not someone who suddenly becomes perfect, but someone who acknowledges that their sin is great, but abides in the truth that the love and grace of Jesus Christ is greater.
Also, Amarillo's megaphone preacher forgets the Holy Spirit's words through John just one chapter earlier: "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (1 John 2:1).

Paul writes to us in the epistle to the Romans that sinning because you're saved, shrugging it off and saying "God will forgive me" is not right: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?" (Romans 6:1-2)
So, what is the truth of the matter? Are we literally unable to stumble once saved, our DNA changed as well as our hearts? Does God put us in a moral straight-jacket that makes it impossible to err? Or, has the precious blood of our Savior Jesus also covered the sins and mistakes we make as Christians? To suggest that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross is good for some of a believer's sins, but somehow becomes ineffective, powerless against those after his or her conversion, is to suggest something as powerful as the blood of our Lord is fickle and limited by a believer's time and circumstance.

In arguing against the belief that true Christians do not sin, I would point to two incidents in the life and ministry of Paul. In the second chapter of Galatians, we read of a dispute between Paul and fellow apostle Peter. Paul describes confronting Peter, and even Barnabas, on a matter of "hypocrisy." This event obviously took place after the resurrection of Jesus, and during the apostles' ministry. So, then, did Peter's stumbling render him unsaved? Not a true Christian? And if so, why would God, sovereign over His word to us, allow two of his epistles to be part of this book we came to call the Bible?

The other example from Paul comes from the second epistle to the Corinthians, where we read of Paul's instructions to the church at Corinth - a church that was often plagued with sin and erroneous ideas about Jesus - concerning a brother who had done wrong and strayed (2 Corinthians 2:5-11). Paul instructs the church there not to shun or ostracize the brother, but to comfort, love, and forgive him. This is just what the Holy Spirit does to each of us when we, like the straying brother at Corinth, wander from God's direction.

Like many people who shout things on the street, I suppose it might be ineffective to confront megaphone man with these truths; for his mind seems made up, and a wall built over his heart. And with such people, the Proverbs give us sound advice: "Go from the presence of a foolish man, when you do not perceive in him the lips of knowledge," and "Though you grind a fool in a mortar with a pestle along with crushed grain, Yet his foolishness will not depart from him."
If you argue with a brick wall, who looks foolish? You, or the brick wall? The Proverbs also tell us, "He who corrects a scoffer gets shame for himself, and he who rebukes a wicked man only harms himself. Do not correct a scoffer, lest he hate you; rebuke a wise man, and he will love you."

But - Jesus tells us "the things which are impossible with men are possible with God." And it is Jesus who took upon Himself the shame and hate of sin - and sinners - on the cross. Before we knew Him, we scoffed at Him, hated Him, scorned Him to shame. But His mercy and grace are unfathomable, as they should be, for they belong to a God who is often so impossible to comprehend, to grasp, to understand. This is why He came to us in the form of that lowly Servant, our ladder to heaven like the one dreamed by Jacob at Bethel.

I won't say this megaphone man gives preachers a bad name - that's impossible, for a true preacher of the word is under the name of Christ. We must pray he receives love from even those at whom he spews the venom of ignorance, and gentle rebuke, done only out love and a desire for him to see how mighty the works of Christ truly are.

My Disastrous Date With Anna Kendrick

Why I was asked on a date by Anna Kendrick was at first a baffling mystery to me, but one I dared not question. And though the truth was revealed that she had mistaken me for Bradley Cooper, a common occurrence, I swallowed my hurt and tried my best to enjoy our fancy, way-beyond-my-budget dinner at Olive Garden.
Despite our date being purely based on mistaken identity, I thought it was going well. Ms. Kendrick even seemed to enjoy hearing my opinions on the failure of Grover Cleveland's second term as President. But, here's where I f*dged up: as I do with any pretty lady I meet, I instantly fell in love, and began to spout overly-flowery praise of her beauty. My gaucherie was at its worst ("gaucherie" is today's word of the day at dictionary.com).
I declared how much I admired her blue bob hairstyle, chubby cheeks, and how lovely she looked in her red bell sleeve dress. The problem with my words, aside from the forwardness, was that Anna Kendrick of course does not sport a bob haircut, her face is proportionate to her thin frame, and she was actually wearing a Radiohead t-shirt and slacks.

The lovely Anna Kendrick.

As stupid as my gaffe was, we do this very same thing with God. We describe Him as something He is not - nay, we insist He is something He is not - we give Him characteristics we want Him to have, all to fit our preferred version of Him. Jesus' followers did this even when He walked the earth as flesh - they wanted Him to be some militaristic leader who would deliver Israel, by force of battle, from the grip of the Roman empire. But He was not. And when they realized this, many turned away from Him. Just like we do when we realize Jesus doesn't fit into the mold of a poster child for our personal agendas and biases.

We describe Him as a hippie, just a nice man with nice teachings, another Buddha, anything we want Him to be. Anything but what He truly is - the only true God, the Savior of mankind who died for our sins and rose again, the God who calls to us to follow Him and leave behind our fleshly treasures and prejudices.
We try to ham-fist our cultural expectations into the meanings of the words of Jesus and those through whom He worked wonders. For example, we see the strength of Elizabeth and Mary as a symbol of feminism; we misconstrue Jesus' words to the rich young ruler as an endorsement of socialism; we see His words "the worker is worthy of his wages" as an endorsement of capitalism; we see Jesus' message that marriage is sacred and children are precious as a banner for conservatism; we make "do not judge" a mantra for liberalism.
We try to force-feed our idolatrous, worldly isms into our perception of God, what we want Him to be.

We do no differently than I did by imposing chubby cheeks and a blue bob on Anna Kendrick.

The Day God Froze the Weather For Me

The day God froze Amarillo, Texas just for me was Black Friday, 2015.

I'd studied myself into a rather dark corner of mind. A mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon had caused the heated debate on gun control to wake from its troubled nap. Wanting to address the subject via YouTube video, I did research on several spree killers and mass shootings. I recorded the video and uploaded it to YouTube on October 15, 2015. But reading about all of these men who had slaughtered other people in public rampages caused my mind much grief and worry. 
But I didn't have the nerve to be surprised.

I began analyzing every place I went, wondering if the next mass shooting would occur there, and how I could shield people with my own body. I eyed anyone who looked shifty or disturbed – though most of the gunmen were described as calm during their killing sprees, as if their rage, illness, and isolation was being weaned by the sound of death.
With Black Friday approaching the day after Thanksgiving, and knowing it to be the biggest and most chaotic shopping day of the year, traditionally, it instantly clicked in my mind to go to the Westgate Mall, where a mass shooting would take place. My mind had decided that someone was going to unleash horror with a semi-automatic rifle at the mall that day – it was an indisputable fact already, as if the event had already been recorded. All that was missing was my being there to try to disarm the shooter, or protect someone else from death by giving my own life. Then, in the trending news, with the callous irony the media loves, one story would read, “Amarillo Victim Posted YouTube Video About Gun Laws One Month Before Shooting.”

"Vanity, says the preacher."

November 27th would be the day I died. But as Thanksgiving wound to a close, a merciless slew of winter-like weather moved into the area. The next day, the city was frozen. Very few vehicles traveled over the ice-covered streets. No one was going shopping in this Goliath.
Slowly, less quickly as my mind had predicted the shooting and my death, it occurred to me that God had assigned this frigid weather for this city for this day, for me. He had frozen an entire city, rendered it to look like the barrenness of death, to show me what a mind that dwelt on death would look life if it were a place – activity and life everywhere, but all of it locked up for fear of the danger and the cold.
I don't know if a shooting would have occurred at the Westgate Mall on Black Friday. It certainly hasn't happened heretofore. I'm convinced that God predestined that day's weather for me, a troubled and unprofitable servant.
Why couldn't He? Why wouldn't He?

A couple of weeks later, a brother and sister in Christ gave me some money so that I could pay some bills and do some Christmas shopping. I walked that mall in peace as the city basked in the bright near-winter sunshine, made so much brighter by its reflection from the pure white snow of God.

I Would Support Abortion, If...

I suppose my admittedly strident and dogmatic opposition to abortion wouldn't be encased with such stubborn sorrow and anger if just one thing about the practice were changed. That one change would be giving the fetus awaiting termination access to legal counsel - or at the very least, a prison law library.

This way, the fetus would be given the knowledge that he or she has the right to a trial by a jury of his or her peers before being executed. The unborn, condemned criminal would even be wise to the notion of claiming that he or she was framed, or even that he or she was legally insane at the time of his or her crime.

The condemned could also learn about a motion to lessen the category of his or her crime, so that maybe it could be reclassified as "involuntary," as the fetus awaiting extermination committed his or her deed by no premeditation or malice of his or her own. The fetus could also learn about pre-trial motions, and that a change of venue would be in his or her favor. The womb can be a very a biased place.

See also: My Objection to Capital Punishment

The Golden Idol of Apathy

I asked God to divert my anger and sorrow away from things that don't matter - Kanye West's rantings, Green Day being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame before Deep Purple and Cheap Trick, the fury of Bernie vs. Hillary - to things that do matter.
So, this month, He allowed me to somehow injure my back, my prescription drug plan to change so that my medications would cost more than I can afford every month, that my most important medication would not be covered at all, so that I'd lose it completely, and that my glasses would break, and I'd not be able to afford new ones.

In the book of Daniel, three men of God, about to be cast into a furnace for refusing to worship Babylonian idols, said, "our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up."

In my case, the false gods and gold images with which I'm tempted are in the form of bitterness and disbelief in God, for allowing me to suffer - which is something He never promised we would be exempt from. I've never understood the thought that "bad things happen, so there must be no God." For this to hold merit or logic, God would have to have first promised that He would protect us from the smallest to the most bone-chilling of horrors - which He has not promised. "If x is y, then x cannot be z" does not work here. He has not sworn to wrap us in bubble wrap to protect us from life's everyday trials and tragedies, nor has He bound us in a moral straight jacket that prevents us from committing wrongs that hurt others - slightly or severely. And I'm glad He hasn't - would love be love with the grueling effort, to choose it?
Instead, God promises us reconciliation to Him through His Son Christ Jesus, who suffered unimaginably on the cross so that we could each be offered the gift of eternal life and a personal relationship with Him - but not without suffering and sorrow on Earth. He has promised to comfort us in the midst of terrors, to give us strength when it seems the world is pitch black in darkness, to give us wisdom and discernment when we seek Him in hope, in desperation, in fear, or in confidence.

God has broken no contract in which He promised protection from each hardship and horror. He has not wronged me in the 29 years I've been alive, and I will not turn away from Him to serve the comfort of apathy, cynicism, and anger. Lord, make these words not boastful, but keep Your hand and on my heart; let me never stray from You to serve what is hopeless and bitter, but to minister to those in sorrow and pain - as You've commanded each of us who believe.

Good gosh I'm interesting.

"Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The LORD God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills."
-Habakkuk 3:17-19

God Killed Him

There it was, in plain black and white, in unadorned speech: "Er, the firstborn of Judah, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; so He killed him."
This statement appears amidst the scores of names and genealogies in the first book of the Chronicles. There are many little jewels that stand out in those first few chapters, so yawn-inducing. "The prayer of Jabez" is the most powerful example, and little things that stick out in the lists of names so alien to us..."And they were helped against them, and the Hagrites were delivered into their hand, and all who were with them, for they cried out to God in the battle. He heeded their prayer, because they put their trust in Him....because the war was God's"...and a daughter of Ephraim, Sheerah, a strong woman who built three cities, in a Book so ignorantly called a chain to women.

But of all the things that softened my heart, there it was: "Er, the firstborn of Judah, was wicked in the sight of the LORD; so He killed him."

Some Christians were given a mind for apologetics as a theological practice and skill. And some were given minds for other gifts. In my bumbling attempts at apologetics, I'd tried to make the more scrutinized and accused pieces of Scripture become acceptable to a world that will never accept it, no matter how lucidly it is explained. Deeper in my motives, I was trying to make the world accept me as some great thinker of Christianity, perhaps the American C.S. Lewis, so that maybe they'd accept the Gospel.

How ridiculous. How idolatrous! I thought the world would accept the Gospel if it accepted me.

But there, the words "He killed him" in a Book where God striking down the wicked is not uncommon, freed me from apologetics, something I had no business handling. I could not make it look acceptable, gentle, and okay in the sight of the world that a God I insist is so kind and gracious struck down a man with death. And I would not try. I was free. I was free from explaining to the world with long-winded evasions the epistle's instructions that a wife should adhere to her husband; I was free from explaining to the world why the Flood makes sense; I was free from explaining to the world that pagan Nineveh really did accept Yahweh, if only for a brief time, at the preaching of Jonah, who had just been spat onto shore by a giant fish, in which he'd spent three days and nights, though no historical record of this conversion exists.

God killed Er, the firstborn of Judah, because he was a wicked dirtbag who contaminated the land and the people in it. And that's the way it was. No God as powerful and as awesome as mine needs an idiot like me to explain Him, to make Him look good to the world that made up its mind long ago that it hates Him and the light He brought by dying on the cross for them.

My God, who killed Er the firstborn of Judah, is an awesome God.

OHMS,
Cpt. Bud Sturguess

"And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, "Teacher, rebuke Your disciples." But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out."" -Luke 19:39-40